Doctors make house calls, but there are no patients to see at Medtronic’s Sofamor Danek prototype lab. Instead they come to see their ideas for new surgical instruments become working prototypes with the help of FDM prototyping. With locations in Memphis, Tenn. and Rossi, France, Sofamor Danek is the world leader in spinal and cranial medical technologies.

“We often see one or two VIP surgeons per day,” says design engineer Richard Franks. “They come in with a problem to solve in the morning. They explain their need to an engineer, the engineer will model a solution on ProEngineer and then make a prototype."